Habemus papam and the church’s turn towards Asia

The smoke that rose from the Sistine Chapel’s chimney on the first day of the conclave was white, and the church had its new pope: the archbishop of Jakarta, the first pope from Asia, who took the name that the world will now learn to say. The election, reached on the first ballots, carried the logic of the late pope’s appointments to its conclusion: the majority that he had created in the college of cardinals had chosen, from its own ranks, the pastor of the growing church, the leader from the continent where the church’s future is being written. The choice signals the direction that the church’s centre of gravity has been moving for a generation, and the signalling was the election’s meaning.

The new pope’s biography is the part of the story that the coverage has assembled in the hours since the white smoke. Born in the city where the largest Muslim-majority country meets the world’s most populous region, ordained through the years of the church’s growth in Asia, and elevated to the see of Jakarta by the late pope, the new pontiff brings the experience that the college was choosing: the ministry of the minority church in the plural society, the governance of the flock in the region where the church is growing, and the pastoral register that the peripheries have taught. The firsts that his election carries, the first from Asia, the first from the archipelago, are the markers of the shift that the church has been conducting for decades, and the markers are the points that the coverage will keep returning to.

The election’s speed is the part of the story that the Vatican-watchers found most significant. The first-day election, reached before the day’s second ballot, was the outcome that the conclaves of the modern era have rarely produced, and the speed was the measure of the consensus that the college had already formed: the electors, the reports suggest, had settled on the candidate in the discussions that preceded the conclave, and the ballots confirmed the settlement without the long deliberations that the divided colleges produce. The consensus is the interpretation that the commentators will debate, and the debate will turn on the question of what the college was choosing: the continuation of the late pope’s path, the fresh pastoral energy of the growing church, or the unity that the short election was designed to demonstrate.

The agenda that the new pope will set will be shaped by the emphases that his biography promises. The pastoral care of the growing churches, the dialogue with the other faiths that his city’s pluralism has made his practice, the attention to the poor that the peripheries have taught him, will be the registers that his pontificate will likely favour; the institutional reforms that the late pope opened will continue or be revised, and the church’s governance will be tested by the new leadership’s priorities. The world’s responses to the election, the statements from the capitals, the coverage in the press, will be the first readings of the new pontificate, and the readings will be revised as the new pope’s voice is heard.

The transition is complete, and the pontificate has begun: the new pope appeared on the balcony, spoke the words that the office’s first appearance requires, and received the acclamations of the square. The conclave that the death of April had convened has delivered its answer, and the answer has set the church on the path that its members and its watchers will follow through the years ahead; the smoke was white, the name was new, and the church, which has outlived every empire it has known, has begun the chapter that the choice from Jakarta will write. Habemus papam, and the having is the church’s oldest act of hope.